Ok, so it's time for another personal build. I love my Shinai, but after a couple of upgrades and a couple of years on my desk, I'm looking for something different. Lately I've been eyeing the InWin H-Frame, which is a gorgeous design, but for me, it's got a couple of problems. Number one, it's expensive. Very expensive. Number two is the layout, while not bad, it doesn't really suit me or my style. So taking these two problems into consideration, I figure the only way for me to avoid spending way to much on a case that I would hack to pieces is to start from the ground up with my own H-Frame clone.

Time to jump into Sketch-up and work up a design.

After trying a few different ideas, I settled on a similar look with an even number of blades and a central motherboard tray which lets me mount the video cards on the back side of the tray. Good for displaying everything and gives a nice symmetry for any water cooling that I want to come up with. Speaking of water cooling, it's designed with it in mind, but it should also work well on air which would ease upgrades. So water cooling is still up in the...air.

Next up in the design phase was to figure out what materials I'm using. I designed it so that the blades are easy to CNC and my first thought was to use aluminum since I've got a fair amount of experience with it. But that's also a reason to use something other than aluminium, I always like trying something new.

So what's hot right now? Seems to be glass. But you can't CNC glass panels....or can you? Well, you can if it's fiberglass. And I've never worked with fiberglass so let's start the experimenting.

So I ordered cloth, resin, and catalyst. That's 30 yards of fiberglass cloth. The resin is surfboard resin which I thought would work well since it cures clear.

Even though I've got a ton of cloth, I decided to try my hand the first time with a Bondo fiberglass patch kit, just to see how difficult it is to work since fiberglass is usually used to cover another material(boats and surfboards) or to be laid in a mold like a gelcoat bathtub, and I'm wanting to make flat sheets.

The larger piece is four layers of cloth while the narrow piece is 8 layers. I wanted to see how well the resin worked through the layers, or 'wetted out'. It was super easy to work with but I am going to have to watch how many layers I try to do at once.

So lets try to make a usable panel. First is to cut out the cloth.

Since most of the middle of panels will be cut out I'm trying to save some glass by using strips for the middle layers and 2' full squares for the outside layers.

Since this is going to be a messy process and the resin will stick to anything, I had to find something to work on that would let me get the sheet back up. My first thought was a piece of particle board that I capped with epoxy, but that didn't work very well. I wound up using the piece of lexan that I originally used to cover my workbench. The resin eats at it, but it's easy to pop the panels off once they've cured.

For my first try, I added a ton of blue dye and a couple drops of black to the resin to see if I could get a transparent effect going on.

And that came out a bit darker than expected.

And purple. WTH?

Trial two, a lot less blue dye, and no black.

And that's super transparent. And still purple? Oh and great the ends of my strips are picking up the dye(or so I thought).

Trial three. Screw it, no dye. Let's just see what that looks like.

Hey the ends are...showing the Sharpie marks from me laying everything out...damn. and it tints towards green with the resin and glass fibers alone. Damn.

And that's as far as I got before I ran out of resin. Next step, try a couple fewer layers(down to 8) so everything wets out better and that should also leave me enough resin in each batch to cap the top of the panel. Right now I've got a cool cloth pattern, but I'm really wanting it smooth.

Transparent dyes are apparently not going to work, so I've got some opaque dyes to try, but if all else fails, I've got a nice Viper metallic blue paint picked out.

It's not very drape-able. Just a regular weave, but seeing how it's working now, I could have just gone with some mat. Would have been cheaper.

I'm curious about the cnc too. I think it should be fine since it acts as kind of like a plastic with sawing and sanding. I guess I'll be finding out soon enough, lol.

I like the cloth layer idea actually. Not the paisley, but capping the panels with a fabric would be pretty cool. I'd have to change how I do it a bit since I'd want to be able to put a finishing coat of resin on to have something to sand, but that would be neat!

I am thinking about how to make a more standard case with gelcoat and molds. The bathtub case.

Continuing with my experiments in fiberglass, I dropped the layering down to 8 layers of glass and tried out an opaque dye. Unfortunately, it felt a lot more flimsy than the 10 layer panels I had made so I'm going to stick with 10 layers. And the dye...meh. The results were better than the transparent dyes I tried, but it looked like a hunk of blue plastic. That's just not gonna cut it so Viper blue metallic it is, at least til I change my mind, LOL.

Since I'm going with paint, I'm not bothering to dye the rest of the panels. I finished the 4th of the "regular" panels up. And since I'm painting everything, I can use the previously dyed panels.

So what do I mean when I say "regular" panels. Well, out of the 8 fins or blades or whatever, these 4 don't have any extras or tricks, just cut the overall shape and they're done. The 2 center panels will have the motherboard tray added to them, and then I've got two left that will get lighting in them.

To pull of the lighting, my plan is to sandwich a piece of acrylic between two thin panels of fiberglass and then I can mount the LEDs in the acrylic and edge light it. I know I'm explaining it horribly, but there is a plan and it will probably make more sense as I get into it. But first off, I need to make the panels I'm sandwiching the acrylic between. To do this, I'm using the same idea for the previous panels and just halving the layers.

You can see the difference in thickness.

And speaking of LEDs, I wanted to try something a bit more...controllable this time around. I'm a fan of RGB strips so that I can fine tune the color or even change it up for a different look, but I usually stay away from multi-color and flashing effects. To me it's too much noise and distracts from the rest of the mod. BUT, while perusing Adafruit, I came across the FadeCandy controller board for addressable LEDs that really caught my eye. It's more art project than lighting, which makes sense cause it was developed for a Burning Man project. Built in dithering with 8 channels that can control up to 64 LEDs per channel over USB. The videos of it were cool. I had to try it.

My first test run was a little hit and miss. I couldn't get some of the examples to work. The example I did get to work was for a 8x8 grid and not a strip of LEDs like I have, but by wrapping the strip around the arm of a chair, I got the strip to act like a grid and played around with it a bit. This video is running an example that controls the lighting with your mouse cursor. It's too bright to really make out a lot of details, but you can see how it shifts the pattern across the LED's.

I'll be using a strip instead of a grid, so shapes are out the window, but I'm thinking a running effect will look nice and my goal is to get a twinkling effect like stars blinking in and out. The hurdle now is figuring out how to program it, LOL.

And more fiberglass fun! I finally got to the final panel! The last two panels include the motherboard tray, so I couldn't just do strips like the other panels. These panels are 10 layers of 2x2 sheets. In order to make sure everything wetted out, I laid them in 2 steps, 5 sheets at a time with a bit of cure time in between.

And what is left over from the huge roll of glass that I ordered. Man I went through a lot.

As usual, I figured out the best way to do things on the last panels, LOL. In retrospect I should have done one more finishing coat on all my panels while I was laying them to get a smooth finish, but I didn't, so now I've got to sand the top layers so I can add this finishing coat. The sanding isn't only to smooth things out, but there are also 2 very important reasons to sand before this final coat. First is for the bonding. Like a lot of paint, once the resin is cured, you can't go back with new resin and get a chemical bond. You're left going for a physical bond and the sanding gives the new resin something to bite on. Secondly, I used a surfacing agent to help with the curing. Resin doesn't like to cure in the air and a surfacing agent is a wax that floats to the top of the surface and forms a barrier between the resin and the air. Great for curing, but now I've got a waxy barrier between the resin and my new resin. It's got to go for the best bond. So, sanding. Lots of sanding.

Just a heads up, if you've never sanded fiberglass, don't. It's not fun. You wind up covered in teeny tiny glass splinters. And I thought dealing with fiberglass tubs was annoying.

While I was sanding like a mad man, I decided it would be a good idea to also sand the top of my workbench for a new paint job, partially because it needed it, partially cause I needed a good place to sand these panels and I figured I'd tear it up in the process.

Ok, so what's been going on for a month that has made this project just drag to a stop? Well, the table is done and turned out mostly the way I wanted.

I went with a sanded finish because I'm gonna scratch the hell out of anything gloss and I had a bit of dust kick up in the epoxy coating. But I like it.

Then PDXLAN. And then sanding the paint off the floor of my paint room(cause I get that way sometimes). And finally ordering materials to finish up the fiberglass. After sanding the panels down, I had to go back over them with another coat of resin to top them off. Unfortunately, I had run out of resin, but after getting some more in, I was in business.

The topcoat filled in all the pits left from the resin soaking into the cloth. It also strengthened the panels a bit more and gave me another excuse to sand all the panels again...yay?

The worst part of all this, even worse than sanding 10 fiberglass panels twice, is that I'm not really happy with the results.

Don't get me wrong, they came out all right I guess, but the panels that I'm going to sandwich the acrylic in are super bendy. Tough as nails, but very bendy.

And the main panels that will have the trays on them came out a little concave. Maybe a 1/4" from the center to the edge. This isn't good for milling them or mounting hardware to them.

Although I know how to fix these issues, I don't really want to spend the money or time to try to redo the panels. For probably the same or less than what it would cost the get these panels right I could just order some sheets of aluminum and throw them on the mill as soon as the arrived.

Needless to say, the aluminum gets here next week.

Which is good because I've got part of the upgrade kit for the X-Carve sitting in the shop. Soon, the aluminum will be flying.

The X-Carve has been upgraded(well, some of the upgrades) and the Aluminum has arrived.

I went with 0.09" 5052 for the stand alone blades and 0.05" for the blades sandwiching the acrylic. The .09" only winds up being about a quarter mm thicker than the .08" I usually use, but that will give it a bit more strength and visual heft without adding a lot of milling time. Just an extra pass or two. I choose 5052 for a couple of reasons. It supposedly isn't as good for milling as 6061, though I've had no problems with it and it mills like butter for me. Also, I'm going to have a fair amount of scrap left over, the center of almost every panel, and I wanted something that I would be able to use around the shop for other projects that could possibly involve bending. So 5052 it was.

First thing I had to do though was do a little fine tuning on the X-Carve. The upgrade replace the double gantry beam with a single unit to add stability so I had to line that out. And when I thought I was ready to start, I realized that all my programs and settings to run everything were on the computer that I just replaced, so I had to download everything and play around a bit to get my feed rate just right.

Now that I got all that figured out, it's time to start running panels.

I did realize I made a bit of a mistake in my design though. My panels are about the same size as my sheets. Next time I'm gonna have to make my design a bit smaller.

But for now, I get to sit back and listen to the sounds of a Dewalt router screaming at me. Yay.

So milling these panels out is boring. But I'll go ahead and show off some of what's done and some stuff that has come in for the build. First off, my acquisitions...spacers. Lots of spacers.

1/4"-20 x 1" brushed aluminum spacers to be exact. My plan being to use these with threaded rod to hold everything together so that when you take one panel off, the whole thing doesn't fall apart. The 1" spacing gives me a similar width as a standard case so it won't be too much of a monstrosity.

And to finish off the threaded rod, caps to hold the outside acrylic panels on.

They're a bit taller than I'd like and I might look for replacements, but they'll do for now.

This is just a bowl full of money.

I did start to piece what I've got milled together. Or at least one side of it. I'm milling pairs towards the center so I've got more done, but I don't want to put pieces on just to take them back off. That's a lot of threading spacers on, so once I get the center pieces milled I'll be able to get it all together to get a true feel of the size this thing is going to be. I already know it's going to be huge, roughly 2'x2'x1'.

One change I'm considering as it's going together is softening the corners a bit. They're pretty harsh angles right now and I'm not sure I like that. My plan for finishing is a dyed wood veneer(which is coming in today and I'm excited) and I think gentler corners might go better with the feel of the wood. But we'll see how things progress, especially once all the panels are milled.

I don't really use my drill press. It's a cheap Craftsman that I inherited from an ex's father. Last time I used it, I about broke my thumb, flung a stainless catch can across the shop, and had to beat the chuck back in with a mallet. I don't trust it for much.

Use the slowest speed possible. Use a vice wherever possible. For flat stuff: set up a wood board you can mount braces and stops in. Always expect that flat part to grab and spin.

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But even with the SLOWEST speed you end up destroying 50 euros worth of drillbits for some lousy oxygen resistant steel :S Whoever invented putting chrome and vanadium into steel never knew the pain that I do

It's turned down as slow as it goes. I've looked at vises, but I'd rather spend the money on a better press than something to make mine not quite as bad.

Honestly, my little 12v Milwaukee takes care of 99.9999% of anything I need. If I need a bit more, I grab the 18v. More than that and I look at the press and then think of another way to accomplish what I need to. I think working mostly on construction and not so much in a shop environment has made me much more comfortable with hand tools than shop tools. Also probably the reason my builds are more off the cuff and less precision designed. Hey, if it's good enough to live in...

And it continues. I'm hoping to be a little more regular on my updates, I've sort of got out of the habit.

Funny thing, as I was looking at the case when I was piecing some parts together, I started thinking that the corners just looked way off from what I was hoping and was thinking of rounding them off. Well, I was looking at the case sitting on it's back, duh.

Sitting right way up, the top corner is much less pronounced so it's not bothering me as much as before. It's still pretty angular, but at least the profile is better. I think I can live with this, especially since when it's done, the panels will have slightly different profiles, hopefully adding a bit to the look.

While putting all this together, I did notice that there was a big difference in the thread tolerances of the spacers vs. the threaded rod. The spacers were more precise, while the rod was all over the place. I chased the threaded rod with a standard 1/4" steel nut and didn't have any trouble, but the spacers had zero slack for any thread that was a bit off. To solve this little problem I decided that rather than re-thread 6' of steel rod, re-cutting the threads of the softer aluminum would be easier. And then things got a bit redneck.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately?, I didn't grab any pictures, but the general idea was stick a spacer in the vise, stick a piece of threaded rod in the drill and may the toughest metal win.

It was totally going to be the steel that won. But chasing the rod through the spacers opened up the threads and now I can put it all together nice and easy. No vice grips necessary.

The only drawback to this method was that some of the spacers wound up with markings from the vise. Some of the threads were so tight, the spacer actually spun in the vise. Imagine threading those by hand. But I needed to get rid of the tooling marks and I just happened to have a drill with a piece of threaded rod chucked up, so...

Instant handheld cordless lathe! Now all I had to do was run some sandpaper up and down this bad idea and I could clean up all the tooling marks. I did take it all the way up to 1000 grit and came up with a nice satin-y polished look...

But it fingerprinted like crazy so I went back to an 800 grit which was pretty close to the original finish.

Speaking of fingerprints, I think I would have left them everywhere after getting all the spacers cleaned up.

I did get some bad news since last post though, my veneer has been delayed...booooo! Guess something went wrong at the mill and the sheets got messed up. On the plus side, they can get me a more heavily figured curly maple sooner than they can get the medium figure I ordered and they'll upgrade me for nothing. Sweet. I wanted the heavy figure anyway but $$$ led me to order the medium.

As for my plans for this maple...Well, I'm not looking for a light colored finish since I've already done that with the bamboo. I like it, but I'm looking for something different. So I also ordered some dye. A lot of dye actually to try out some different effects. But the one I'm hoping turns out really well would give me something similar to this(ignore the oak on the bottom right, the other two are pieces of maple I believe)...

I'm thinking that mixed with parts painted in the Viper blue that I used on Rehab...

It's just a crazy thought right now until I get the veneer in and play around with the dye on some scraps. Then I'll be able to nail down a color that suits the build.

Awwww yeah. That blue dye looks good. You realize I just spent $40 on a 12 x 18" bit of plastic that looked like that? I could have used veneer?!?!?!
-Anyway.. Blue/shiny aluminum will look awesome. You might want to use a corded drill or the press for marathon drill runs like that. I've already burned up a cordless drill motor doing that. The little DC motors just can't take it. And guess what- Getting a replacement motor is nearly impossible unless you buy it with the drill. They make a slightly different model every year so the replacements dry up fast.

Awwww yeah. That blue dye looks good. You realize I just spent $40 on a 12 x 18" bit of plastic that looked like that? I could have used veneer?!?!?!
-Anyway.. Blue/shiny aluminum will look awesome. You might want to use a corded drill or the press for marathon drill runs like that. I've already burned up a cordless drill motor doing that. The little DC motors just can't take it. And guess what- Getting a replacement motor is nearly impossible unless you buy it with the drill. They make a slightly different model every year so the replacements dry up fast.

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Yeah, but your plastic will arrive looking like that.

It's a Milwaukee so I'm not too worried about it. They're tough as nails and usually pretty good about repair parts. I'm picking up a hole hawg from service today that I think we bought in the 90's. I doubt the 12v cordless stuff has that longevity, but honestly with their cordless stuff, the challenge is to get as much use out of it as you can before they switch their line-up and battery system.